Dear Editor,
I wish to congratulate the PPP government for restoring the Guyana Prize for Literature. This is a step in the right direction and concomitantly congratulate the winners. With the popularity of Bolly-wood, Hollywood and the popular series, Blood and Fire, there is sometimes a confusing gray line between history, facts and fiction. In all this, words and phrases have become convoluted and sometimes contradictory. As youngsters in primary school, we were all excited about a Persian folktale, the story of the Arabian Nights popularly known as ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’. Looking at the Guyana scene, a friendly writer will win the first prize – all he or she has to do is to refer to humongous massive contracts being awarded to friends of the new elite. The writer can lean on this slow but steady drift of the Cooperative Republic being a Police authoritarian state.
People involved in protest over the heavy-handed manner of sections of the Police Force are purportedly involved in the destruction of stalls at Mon Repos but are charged under this new terrorist act designed here and elsewhere to deal with acts of terror with penalties similar to committing murder. Would the assailant at Woodley Park be charged with a similar serious offense; so far the charge is a simple one of assault. They say different strokes for different folks. We see civilians being appointed as Police Prosecutors while ignoring serving policemen for further training and upward mobility.
The letter written by Ret’d Asst Com-missioner Clinton Conway (SN, March 10, 2023) is eloquent and points to a distressing situation and I recommend it to every Police rank and citizen as necessary reading or should I say literature. We live in a country where items were removed from a PNC Office that was occupied for nearly fifty years in the wee hours of the morning by agents ostensibly of the PPP and supported by the Guyana Police Force and under the protective sword of the police force. To add insult to injury a PNC operative is now charged because he did the natural thing of attempting to protect the Party’s property and protesting this wanton incursion.
The Commissioner of Police (ag) flew into Lethem that day, last Thursday and we are yet to receive a report of the incident conducted in the wee hours of the morning and as I noted earlier I am not satisfied that the land in question is state or government property. There are other atrocities openly committed by those, who in 1992, prattled about the return to democracy. If we look at the Dictionary of Canadian, British and American English, we would find, over time, a change in meaning and understanding of certain terms.
One such is democracy referred to earlier and now practiced in Guyana. In the hay days of slavery and the rape of treasures in India, Africa and elsewhere, those who committed such acts did so in the name of democracy. There is an interesting book written by Janda, Berry and Goldman titled, ‘The challenge of Demo-cracy,’ which deals with the fascinating movement of democracy in the United States.
Another submission for the Guyana Prize 2024, taking into account all of the posturing of oil and gas and the reduction of our Parliament to a dismal time wasting process is democracy in Guyana. The author can simply say that the new Guyana lexicon and dictionary state that what was democracy generations earlier now means ‘demons gone crazy’. In our temples, in our mosques, in our churches and cathedrals let us with humble hearts pray to excise the demons who now strut and occupy the corridors of power in the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Let us pray that they stop playing dice with the lives of people.
Sincerely,
Hamilton Green
Elder
